Hello, my name is Lydia!  I am a freshman from Connecticut and I am currently in the Smeal College of Business here at Penn State.  I, like many of you, have had a rough relationship with science over the past few years and I am very excited to see what this course has to offer.

While trying to finalize my schedule, I began searching the science classes for one to fulfill my general education requirement (like the majority of people in this class).  Through personal experience in high school, I did not have a desire to know most of the topics we were learning about in my science classes.  Surprisingly, not once have I had to determine if a rock was igneous or sedimentary since my freshman year Earth Science class.  Likewise, I haven’t had to list out the bones in the human body since Biology three years ago.  I understand the importance of knowing these things about the way the body and the world around us works, but it’s delivery has been so boring.  

So, when I had to select a class, I couldn’t find one that didn’t remind me of my previous lousy experiences.  When I came across SC200,  I chose it right away because I was super excited to finally have a new, more interesting science experience.  The focus on discussion and critical-thinking instead of labs and facts appealed a lot to me.  In the end, I decided to take this class because I enjoy the idea that the students can have a say in what we learn about taught by a professor who wants us to learn.

Due to my poor experience in science from middle school to high school, I was never interested enough to continue to study and major in it.  Since I never had a creative and thought-provoking experience in my science classes, I preferred to major in business in order to use those skills.  I know scientists use these skills as well, but the classes I took all revolved around facts.  Even though I will not major in science, I look forward to taking this class because I hope it can improve my critical thinking skills while learning about the interesting ideas found through science.  If science is taught the right way, it can be very interesting to students and can easily become their favorite subject.  Since science is not a very common major these days, I was thinking if the way science is being taught in schools has affected the “reputation” of the science major.  This article raises this question: Why are science majors decreasing in popularity, and should we high school educators accountable for this?  From past experience, I think the way science is taught in schools makes it seem boring, but it is actually very cool.  Although each school has strict curriculum, teachers should give students more of a chance to communicate what they find interesting and want to learn about.  Since that is how this class is taught, I am hopeful that this class will give me a renewed sense of appreciation and curiosity for science.

I am very excited about what this class has to offer.  I will continue to do research on subjects that relate to my everyday life in order to see if we can discuss them during class.  I enjoyed listening to some of the topics brought to attention in class.  To me, one of the most interesting (yet not as important) topics is the flossing controversy. Here is an article by the BBC questioning whether flossing really does provide benefits.  I am very excited to discuss this topic more in class.

I look forward to this semester and also to learn about the interesting and important topics!

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